Sunday, March 30, 2003

Josh Micah Marshall has been writing a series of outstanding pieces on the role the civilian leadership in the U.S. has played, and has apparently got some heat for it:

PM continues to get whining messages from Bush supporters saying that this site is somehow either supporting or giving aid to the nation's enemies by pointing out the administration's mistakes. Not true. TPM is obviously no military man. But, to the extent that I had any angle on this issue, it was from interviewing current and retired career officers over the last year. Frankly, if these Bush partisans have a beef with me, they have a beef with them.

The people who have spent a year trying to make sure we didn't send our troops into battle unprepared are not the ones who are endangering our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.
So, let's compare and contrast. On the one side, we've got the obnoxious supporters of the same civilian leadership whose brilliant schemes led to Marines getting to eat a single meal a day. On the other hand, we have retired career officers. The latter merely point out how the civilian leadership screwed up in not letting soldiers do their job... the former use "patriotism" tactics that wouldn't be out of place in Stalinist Russia.

I honestly doubt that Josh needs to worry about losing the moral high ground here.

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